Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

cryoshon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 249 posts

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#131

Post by jellicle »

nickbauman wrote: post #25
paulddraper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"lower class are basically slaves" You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery ? You should read a little bit about slavery and human trafficking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery I suspect most slaves would not agree with you.

Masters actually bought slaves. They weren't cheap. So they had to, you know, feed them and care for them somewhat. Now when you aren't needed at the 7/11 you can almost just go die in a fire: have you seen was homelessness is like in the US? I have.

The difference between slaves and workers is that dying or becoming too wounded to work is an expense, for slaves.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#132

Post by HiLo »

I like how he tries to quote a "Nobel prize winning economist" as an appeal to authority, but then (without naming him) insults Picketty's work, which will probably win a Nobel. PG is a smart guy but he really should stick to his areas of expertise, him and Marc Andreessen both frequently make basic finance and econ theory mistakes. PG's claim that he is in a position to speak with authority on inequality is like an electrician claiming he is in a position to speak with as much authority as the architect concerning the overall progress of the building.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#133

Post by DrScump »

relkor wrote: post #130
jazzyk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth distribution is a big problem, because the richest can essentially buy the government (and that's exactly what they have been doing) [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20... ] But if you took the money from the 1% and distributed it to everyone, it would probably amount to a few thousand dollars each, at best. The reason for lack of jobs is the they all went to India, China, etc. As fo…

This buying the government is terrifyingly real. In university I once went to a dinner/seminar hosted by one of the top three law firms in DC, where we were instructed on how exactly to bribe congressmen. It turns out to buy a vote, a Representative is 10k and a Senator is 20k. They walked us through how we could give bonuses to employees with the understanding that part of that money would be written as maximum indi…

  We were assured that it was not illegal as long as these
  bonuses and donations to not match in space and time.
It's absolutely illegal. What he was apparently trying to convey is that it you are less likely to be caught if the contributions are spread out.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#134

Post by rhizome »

ubernostrum wrote: post #97
roymurdock wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Piketty's suggested policy response is simple: high taxes on aggregated wealth. You need to go one step further and outline where and how the federal government should put this new tax revenue to work. How much should we raise taxes? Which brackets? What form of wealth do we tax? Why taxation rather than issuing bonds? What percent of gov revenue should we allocate to the DoD? How much to Social Security and Medica…

It's easy to say "raise taxes". It's hard to say where the new revenue should be invested, by whom, and how. It's also easy, when someone proposes solving one problem, to say "well, you're not allowed to solve that one until you've solved every other problem in the world first". It's hard to say "OK, you seem to be prioritizing this problem, let's both make our arguments and because we live in a democracy whoever swa…

The fallacy of relative privation: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#135

Post by Pyxl101 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #111
Pyxl101 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They use investment vehicles which are increasingly divorced from "real world" economics and more like moving chips around on a poker table. Which investment vehicles are those? You cannot in general invest money into vehicles which earn a good return but which are divorced from the real world. Imagine if you invest in a company like Apple. Apple developed products like the iPod and iPhone, and the company's value…

> Which investment vehicles are those? Hedge funds and the like. > leads to their valuation, which leads to the return on our hypothetical investment. 'Return' on an increase in valuation isn't a real return. It's exactly like poker. The way markets are supposed to work is you invest in an IPO, then you get a dividend sometime in the future, and then maybe the company buys back your shares. The way it generally works…

> 'Return' on an increase in valuation isn't a real return. It's exactly like poker.

Completely false. Let's talk about how investment money is used, and how that impacts valuation.

Say that a friend has started a new farm as a business and he's seeking investment. He'd like a cash investment in order to buy a tractor, harvester, and combine for the farm, which he can't afford himself. So I make the investment and the farm buys the equipment, which enables the farm to grow substantially more crops (vs tilling, planting, and harvesting by hand). By growing more crops with that equipment, the farm has vastly more revenue and earnings.

This farm has actually grown more crops than it could have otherwise - the investment led to the creation of wealth. The crops are net additional wealth, and the farm's ability to grow and sell them for revenue leads directly to the increase in the farm's valuation.

The farm grows and hires more employees; it's also an engine of job creation. All made possible by the investment, without which the farm could not have gotten started.

> Hedge funds and the like.

And what do hedge funds do with the investment money they receive from the wealthy? Do they put that cash under their mattress and somehow generate returns by doing that? No, they invest it in companies which use the cash to create wealth.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#136

Post by puredemo »

wfo wrote: post #65
mwcampbell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, It's tangential, but can you please explain this part? It seems to me that "All Lives Matter" really is the more apt phrase, because it shifts the focus from an us-versus-them conflict to actual justice. Edit: Got it. I'll stop being part of the problem. The only remaining question is this: What's the most effective way to b…

Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", you're not just saying you think all lives matter, you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. And willfully ignoring the problem of racism is what has allowed racism to flourish in, say, police departments. So when you say "all lives matter" you're esse…

>you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue.

Correct, it isn't a racial issue. Take the two most well-known cases for instance, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.

Trayvon Martin assaulted Zimmerman unilaterally (Zimmerman never threw a punch,) had him in a ground-and-pound position and was bashing the back of Zimmerman's head onto the sidewalk while Zimmerman repeatedly screamed for help. If any white seventeen-year-old had done the same thing there would be zero outcry about recognizing the need for self-defense on the part of the neighborhood watchman. If a white kid in a hoodie was walking behind houses in the rain and looking into windows, nobody would label it "profiling" when a neighborhood watch leader called the police, since that's obviously questionable behavior.

Michael Brown had just committed robbery at a convenience store, then he assaulted a cop who asked him to walk on the sidewalk, then tried to wrestle away the cop's gun. Forensics shows Michael Brown didn't have his "hands up" when he was shot, meaning the witnesses all lied about the situation. Again, if a white teenager had committed strongarmed robbery and proceeded to try to grab a cops gun there would be literally zero sympathy or outcry when he was shot in self-defense by the cop. People would basically just call the dead teenager "trailer-trash," or something equally derogatory and move on.

The only factor race plays in any of this is that we would never have even discussed or heard of these absurd cases had the so-called "victims" not been black. If race enters into the narrative at all it's in the form of black privilege / supremacy, in that black communities seem to believe these incredibly violent assaults are fine and don't merit self-defense for some reason, solely due to skin color.

More accurately, it's all hyped up and manufactured by the media to stoke division because nothing sells ad space like impassioned controversy.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#137

Post by tezza »

cryoshon wrote: post #6

I hope I didn't go too overboard by dissecting PG's essay like this, but I felt it was necessary to correct many of the items that I read. It may seem spurious now, but economic inequality is relevant for the tech industry, too. The massively increased productivity that information technology provides is very infrequently distributed proportionally to the people who actually forged it-- exactly the same condition as…

It was a nice riposte. Altough the concentration on income inequality overall is perplexing to me.

Income can be measured and is emotive ( I earn X but my cousin earns 10X ), yet I think concentrating on this metric is obscuring some bigger issues. You do touch on them in your counterpoint.

Karl Marx in Das Kapital explains the situation post Industrial Revolution and prior to the World Wars. The landlords conspired with the factory owners to keep rents high and wages low so that workers had little ability to move or leave.

This lack of freedom in a self determination sense is creeping back into Western economies. Mortgages and rents are so high that workers spend most of their wage paying that.

So never mind that middle class income equality is 17% lower than middle class income equality 1980. House prices and rents have climbed more than enough even if 'equality' had persisted. ( Also prices for the very rich have increased too. )

But instead of a landlord class and factory manager class conspiring the prices have risen via market forces and lax monetary policy and the relabeling of debt as 'credit'

Another factor is opportunity equality. Meritocricy has greatly reduced since 1980, and is acutely poor now. Entry into elite jobs like CEOs, the Media Class, (cough) VCs and Private Equity firms are chosen from just a few streams. Harvard, Wharton, Ivy League in the States and moneyed private school in Europe. From outside those circles it is a struggle to join.

Paul touched on WW2, but I would go further and say both WW1 and WW2 were the genesis of a burst of meritocracy unleashed by mass death in Europe at the same time as vast strides in technology.

Getting a good job was easy in 1960 because everyone had died in 1915 - 1945 and there were many new classes of job.

These days, people are working and living longer and it is harder to get to the top... your boss didn't die in battle, you'll have to wait.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#138

Post by PaulHoule »

catwell wrote: post #53
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

An HFT isn't entirely useless. You might want to sell 66 shares of Apple stock and somebody else wants to buy 145 and for you both to get a timely fill, there has to be some kind of middleman. If you think HFTs are bad, just take a look at floor traders -- the kind of people who will front run you if they see you coming and they know what you want, or will take a bathroom break if they don't want to trade with you. R…

This. For more details, read "Flash Boys: Not So Fast" by Peter Kovac ( http://www.amazon.fr/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective-High-Fr... ). Alternatively, Chris Stucchio's blog posts (starting with https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html and https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology2.html ) work. We have been told so much that HFT were the bad guys by the media that we ended up believing it,…

The people I know who really hate HFT are hedgies because they'd like to make big trades for free.

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#139

Post by amag »

chimeracoder wrote: post #95
marshray wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries in Western Europe have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times since the 19th century when slavery was practiced.

> Many countries in Western Europe have been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times This doesn't change the fact that the current economic status of Denmark and Sweden today is directly linked to their status as colonial powers and slaveholders from the 17th-20th century. > since the 19th century when slavery was practiced. This entire subthread began with the claim that being "low-class" in the US is tantamount to sla…

Late 19th century, early 20th, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. The wealth of Sweden was accumulated post-WWII when the rest of Europe stood in ruins and needed to be rebuilt, not by being a colonial force to be reckoned with (it never was).

Re: A Response to Paul Graham’s Article on Income Inequality

#140

Post by Estragon »

mwcampbell wrote: post #44
jgord wrote: post #9

PGs articles aren't wrong - but they are second order, when we need a first order response to a current evil [ before it leads to bloody revolution ] If you look at income distribution its a hockey stick - you really have to slap yourself on the face and realise there is no middle class - what you thought of as professional-middle-class-contributor is actually college-debt-burdened-lower-class - no matter how many ye…

> So, just as "All Lives Matter" is not a good response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement, It's tangential, but can you please explain this part? It seems to me that "All Lives Matter" really is the more apt phrase, because it shifts the focus from an us-versus-them conflict to actual justice. Edit: Got it. I'll stop being part of the problem. The only remaining question is this: What's the most effective way to b…

"All lives matter," as a response to "Black lives matter," carries roughly the same implications as "Everybody hurts!" would, as a response to "I'm hurting real bad right now!"
Post reply on HN